SDMC06-07

The Shared Decision Making Committee at Gordon Elementary is represented by the election of faculty, staff, parents and community members. A two to one ratio is employed for election of faculty and staff members.

While there are many sources for SDM Committee issues, most topics of concern are first raised in the grade level chairpersons' meeting held the first Wednesday of every month. If necessary, topics are submitted to the next scheduled SDM meeting held every third Wednesday of the month. The meeting is advertised in the bilingual school newspaper, “The Gordon Gazette”, as well as by a notice posted on the bulletin board in the front hallway of the school. Anyone may attend an SDMC meeting and present his/her views however, only SDMC members may vote. The SDMC utilizes both majority and consensus in the decision-making process. Gordon's SDMC makes decisions regarding the design and revision of the School Improvement Plan, planning, budgeting, curriculum, staffing patterns, staff development and basic school organization issues. Personnel concerns are not addressed by the SDMC but referred to the principal. During the first semester the School Improvement Plan is reviewed at each monthly SDMC meeting in order to assess its progress. During the second semester, the SDMC begins the revision process developing the SIP for the upcoming school year. The rough draft of the SIP is then finalized usually in April.

Any individual or group may submit a “Topic of Concern” (TOC) on a specific TOC form which can be obtained and submitted to the SDMC in the “SDMC Box” which is located in the teacher's lounge. Submission procedures are the same for school personnel, parents and the community. An SDMC member continually logs in the TOC and, several days before the scheduled SDMC meeting; these topics will be recorded and posted on the agenda for the meeting.

All information, responses, suggestions and outcomes that are relative to the SDMC are distributed school-wide to all faculty, staff, parents and students. This is accomplished through a bilingual medium (English and Spanish) such as the school newspaper, “The Gordon Gazette.” Bilingual flyers are also posted in the school lobby.

GORDON ELEMENTARY SDMC

Name of SDMC Member	Category	Position	Term Expires
Heylin Smith	Classroom Teacher	2nd Grade Bilingual Teacher	5/2007
Jaime Narvaez	Classroom Teacher	5th Grade Bilingual Teacher	5/2007
Alba Salvat	Classroom Teacher	3rd Grade Bilingual Teacher	/52007
Regina Garvey	Classroom Teacher	4th Grade ESL Teacher	5/2007
Jorge Garcia	Classroom Teacher	2nd Grade Bilingual Teacher	5/2008
Amparo Arbizu	Classroom Teacher	2nd Grade Bilingual Teacher	5/2008
Martha Carrizales	Classroom Teacher	3rd Grade Bilingual Teacher	5/2008
Barbara Kovich	Classroom Teacher	3rd Grade Regular/ESL	5/2008
Donna Gilger	Other School Based Professional	Nurse	5/2007
Polly Kotarba	Other School-Based Professionals	Librarian	5/2008
Annett Baptiste	Other School-Based Professionals	Special Education	5/2008
Cassandra Sandoval	Non-instuctional	Teacher Aide	5/2008
Robert Aguilar	Community	Community Representative (Appointed by the Principal on 4/20/05)

Members Absent: Gipson (Illness), E. Williams (YMCA), Vasquez, Gebhart (Illness), Wilson

Temple Eman U El – will begin work soon on placing picnic tables and chairs in various outdoor areas on our campus, such as the couryards and the playground areas. Ms. Vann has been working on this with the Temple Eman U El.

Nextira – will continue to be our Junior Achievement sponsor as well as providing our school with gifts for our students in December.

For the safety of our students parents or any other unauthorized adults are not permitted to stroll our halls or to enter classrooms without first going to our office and obtaining a pass.

Excuse notes – having a flat tire and the family oversleeping are not considered to be valid excuses for student absences.

Our SIP will be changed this year to reflect the goals that our school hadn't achieved last year.

SDM Election – You will be receiving a ballot for nominations to replace Ms. Suter on the SDM committee to full-fill the one remaining year on her 2 year term.

Teacher Aide Upgrades – Our teacher aides have completed the required training that they were supposed to receive last year and will be reclassified this year. The upgrades will be reflected in this year's budget as a $19,000 increase in their salaries.

Baseball tickets: We were sent 4 box seat tickets to an Astros game on September 27 to be given to our teacher of the year. After a brief discussion it was decided that the tickets would be offered to Mr. Suarez, the bilingual teacher of the year, since Ms. Toro, our teacher of the year is no longer on the Gordon Faculty.

Flu Shots – The SDM voted to authorize Ms. Gilger to allow a private company to come to Gordon to administer flu shots for $18 apiece.

Cafeteria Food – A question was raised in the SDM about whether or not the cafeteria was serving what was on the school daily menu.

Members Present: Brenner, Vann, Zubler, Deggs, Rodriguez, Gebhart, Gipson, Arbizu

Flu Shots: As of today they are still going to be here on October 29 for those immunizations.

SDMC Training: The West Central District is going to have required training for members of our school's SDMC. No date has been set.

Teacher Aide Upgrades: All 9 teacher aides have been upgraded at a cost of $3100 each, with 6 of the upgrades coming from our budget and 3 being paid for out of the Special Ed. Budget.

Money, Replacing Materials: Our school budget is probably slimmer this year than it has been in many, many years. Some of the reasons for this problem is that we are required to buy back services from the West Central District and HISD had made after the fact budget item changes. Ms. Brenner will be asking teachers to prioritize a wish list so that when money does become available she will have some idea in what direction that it should be applied.

5th Grade Task Force: The West Central District has formed a committee that is looking into the difficult transition of kids from 5th to 6th grades. Teachers will be asked for input.

Annuity Investment Speaker: Ms. Brenner has agreed to allow a salesman from Stuart Jacobson to speak during the last 3-5 minutes of our November Faculty meeting. She will also allow him to set up a table in the hallway following the presentation to answer any further questions that teachers may have concerning his program.

Mitzvah Day: On Sunday Nov. 21, at approximately 8:00 a.m., Temple Eman-U-El will be here to construct an outdoor classroom. Its locations will be in the couryard between the two wings of our main building and near the Bissonnet St. side playground area. Ms. Brenner has recommended that we come up with some way of providing them with food and drink while they are here that day. Ms. Gipson has agreed to organize the Gordon assistance.

Fall Carnival: The item for discussion was the brevity of our Fall Carnival, which will take place on Friday, October 29. After a brief discussion the SDM voted to set a 1:00 p.m. start time for this year's carnival, which would lengthen it from the 1:30 p.m. usual startup time. To help in achieving that start time Ms. Crockett will be asked to provide sack lunches that day.

Members Present: Zubler, Deggs, Vasquez, Vann, Brenner, Gipson, Rodriguez, Gebhart

Cindy Tedesco, a West Central District Instructional Supervisor was in attendance at the start of this meeting. Mr. Deggs asked about her about the time allotment for PE for kids according to Senate Bill 19 and he additionally inquired about a cover for our blacktop area for PE classes. Ms. Tedesco said that she would look into both matters.

Representatives from two HISD approved retirement plan vendors, Momentum Financial and AXA Group, asked for permission to meet with our faculty concerning the plans that they are offering. The SDM voted to allow both of these vendors to place their information in our teachers' lounge or teachers' mailboxes and to not allow either vendor to come on campus to do their presentations.

Kids and Bathrooms: Some of our children are still writing on the bathroom walls. It is believed that some of this is happening in the mornings before classes. The only bathrooms that will be open in the mornings, before 8:15 a.m., will be the ones in the wings that are closest to our main building.

Uniforms: Many kids are showing up on our campus out of school uniforms. Ms. Brenner will ask that each teacher purchase a package of white tee shirts. The school will reimburse each teacher and the tee shirts can be laundered right here at school.

Library Services is voluntarily going to buy our school library new tables to replace the present ones.

Ms. Brenner is attempting to acquire funds to replace the scanner that is used for book checkouts in our library. Unfortunately we don't have the money in our budget to replace it. The cost of a new one is approximately $1000.

Test Monitoring: We are going to have several visitors during test time this year.

Members Present: Zubler, Deggs, Vasquez, Brenner, Gipson, Rodriguez, Gebhart,

Topics of Concern

It was decided after a lengthy discussion to handle the distribution and storage of the science materials in the following manner. Since the science materials were intended for use by our entire campus the materials will be distributed and stored in several classrooms around campus. It was further decided that since the emphasis, especially this year for TAKS/Science in the 4^th and 5^th grades, that the bulk of the materials will be stored in upper grade classrooms where they can be checked as needed by other grade levels. Ms. Kovich is preparing a check out sheet with locations of each item. The check out sheet will be available in the teachers lounge just as other requisition item sheets are.

Mr. Hanser has proposed that one of our teacher in-service days for next school be spent at Camp Olympia, which is located approximately 1.5 hours from here. The SDM gave Mr. Hanser a tentative approval to investigate further the feasibility of doing this.

TAKS Bathroom Monitoring

Ms. Brenner has recommended that bathroom breaks during TAKS testing be permitted singly and on an as needed basis to prevent discussion of test items by students during those breaks. She further recommends that children be taken as a class prior to testing and on the way to lunch.

Ancillary Pick and Delivery

This TOC concerns children arriving back at their regular classrooms following ancillary considerably later than the scheduled dismissal of children from those classes. After discussion of this item the following recommendations were made: 1.) That all grades will use a central assigned drop off and pickup location which should prevent late arrivals from ancillary classes. 2.) That regular classroom teachers will drop and pickup their children at those locations.

This TOC concerns the unequal distribution of students to classes on days of teacher absence by office employees. The SDM has already set the policy that children were to be equally distributed to classes on days of absence as to not overly burden any one particular teacher. The SDM recommended that the office staff be reminded of this policy so that it would be implemented on future teacher absence days where no substitute is available.

A related issue with this TOC concerns the ancillary class attendance of students on teacher absence days when children are distributed to other classrooms. Those children who are assigned to other classes are to attend that classroom's ancillary schedule and not their regular classes' ancillary times.

Members Present: Gipson, Zubler, Rodriguez, Chaaba, Arbizu, Gebhart, Vann, Brenner, Deggs, Caperton

SDM Elections for 2005-06 School Year: This item concerned a discussion of the revised rules regarding campus SDMC's in HISD. According to the revised rules all SDMC's will now be composed of three self electing parts: The Classroom Teachers, The Other School Based Professionals and The Non-Instructional Staff. The first two groups must be represented as a 2-1 ratio while the third will have one member on the committee. The PTO/PTA will also elect two members to the committee. There will no longer be at-large elected members to the committee. Our present ratio is 5-4. After the elections for 2005-06 we will be in compliance with 6 classroom teachers and 3 other campus based professionals. Three classroom teachers: Ms. Arbizu, Mr. Rodriguez, and Ms. Vann and two other campus based professionals, Mr. Zubler and Ms. Gipson, will not have to stand for election because they will be serving out the second year of their elected terms next year. To achieve the new ratio 3 classroom teachers and 1 other campus-based professional will have to be chosen.

Playground Cover Color: Ms. Brenner was told that a company has been selected to place a cover over our basketball court. The company has asked us to select a color for the cover. The SDM voted to select white, in order to better reflect the heat.

TAKS Preparation: Ms. Brenner wanted to know what additonal things were being done to prepare our students for their up and coming TAKS test. Some of the items mentioned were tutoring and mentoring of students by the ancillary staff during their regular scheduled class-time, and on line released TAKS testing that is being done by Mr. Zubler with 5th graders in the Gordon regular computer lab. Additionally it was suggested that we have a TAKS related pep assembly during the week of April 18th.

Financial Consultant: The National Bond Corp. requested approval to come to our campus to present their financial plan at a faculty meeting. The SDMC voted against this proposal.

Fund Raiser: Pre-K has requested permission to hold a fund raiser next year to maintain their sand boxes and to replace equipment and toys related to those sand boxes. This Fund-raiser would probably be the Christmas photos of students which are sold to parents, as they have been done in the past. The SDMC voted unanimously for this proposal.

Curriculum Mapping: Ms. Brenner suggested sending some of the newer teachers to these meetings on May 3 and 19, which are concerned with Curriculum Mapping.

Tutorials: This TOC was concerned with the late identification of students for Tutorials. It also suggested that we have a much earlier start date for tutorials in order for students to receive the needed intervention. After a brief discussion the SDMC voted to allow 2 day per week Tutorials that will begin in October of next year.

Members Present: Arbizu, Caperton, Deggs, Gipson, Rodriguez, Gebhart, Brenner, Zubler, Robert Aguilar (Community Representative)

Members Absent: Vann (Congratulations to Ms. Vann on the birth, yesterday, of her new grandchild, Karmen), Chaaba, Wilson, De Los Santos, Vasquez

SDM Elections: The results of the recent election: The classroom teachers selected Mr. Narvaez, Ms. Garvey, and Ms. Salvat, while the Other Professionals Selected Ms. Gilger. Our SDM for next will be composed of the following: Ms. Arbizu, Ms. Vann, Mr. Rodriguez, Ms. Garvey, Ms. Salvat , and Mr. Narvaez who will represent the Classroom Teachers; the Other Professionals will be represented by Mr. Zubler, Ms. Gipson, and Mrs. Gilger. The Campus Non Professional Employees will be represented by Ms. Wilson and Mr. Robert Aguilar will be our community representative.

This TOC was concerned with the lack of lower grade representation, for next year, as a result of the recent elections. The SDM voted to expand the committee by one member and that new member will be selected by the grades Pre-K, K, and1 teachers in a special election involving those teachers only.

TAKS: The extra tutoring that has been done by the ancillary staff seems to have been helpful in bolstering the confidence of some of our students.

TPRI: The assistance given to teachers, by the hiring of subs, has allowed this testing to be a lot less intrusive and hectic for teachers. Ms. Brenner wants to make the hiring of subs, for a lot of this and other testing, to be a regular part of our school budget.

International Festival: Two items were discussed in regards to the Festival. One was concerned with the amount of testing this year being an interference in getting classes ready for performances at this year's festival. The other item was concerned with allowing the festival to have an adequate amount of time. After some discussion the SDM consensus was that there should be no performances as part of the festival this year and that the festival will take place from 1-2:45.

Curriculum Mapping: Due to the HISD reorganization going on these meetings have been cancelled.

Tutorials: Whether or not our Tutorials will able to have an earlier starting date next year, as voted by the SDM in the March SDM meeting, will depend on the timing of our budget and the allotment that we receive.

Oil Ranch: This issue concerned the number of kids who do not pay for their admission to the Oil Ranch. Some SDM members felt that the school's policy of eventually paying for everyone who said that they couldn't pay was leading to the school's being taken advantage by some children and their parents. Further they felt that our policy should state firmly that if you don't pay then you don't go. After some discussion it was the consensus of the SDM that our current policy of paying for those who say that they aren't able to pay should continue but that it be left to the classroom teacher's discretion to determine if a child really is in need of assistance.

Laptops: The concern here was about whether or not HISD had changed it's original intent of allowing teachers to keep their laptops at the end of this year. Ms. Brenner stated that she has heard nothing to contradict the original intent of the program.

The Jewish Community Center wants to come to Gordon on Sunday, May 22 to do a campus beautification project, as part of their Mitzvah Day.

Mr. Robert Aguilar, our newest SDM member and the Gordon Boy Scout leader, will assist Ms. Mejia with the monitoring of the children who will not be going to the Oil Ranch.

Members Present: Zubler, Arbizu, Gipson, Salvat, Brenner, Garvey, Gilger, Smith

Ancillary Schedule Change Proposal – This TOC, which proposed a schedule change for ancillary classes for next year, was submitted by Ms. Kotarba. After a brief discussion the SDM felt that this proposal needed to be discussed by the grade levels before any change could take place. Ms. Brenner further stated that she will be sending out a survey to teachers in each grade level with choices as to their preferences for ancillary times for next year.

Cinco de Mayo Proposal – Ms. Brenner proposed brining a group of dancers and a mariachi band from Johnston Middle School to Gordon for Cinco de Mayo here. However the date of the performance will have to take place on a date prior to or after May 5th since that is the date of our all school Oil Ranch Field Trip.

TAKS and Stanford/Aprenda – This TOC had to do with adopting our procedures for our testing this year, especially since teachers will be testing classes other than their own.

For TAKS Ms. Brenner and the SDM has come up with the following proposals: Special headphone devices that allow students to read the test outloud without being heard by other students are legal and will be allowed. There will be a common 8:30 startup time. Ancillary teachers will have their regular schedule and will relieve those teachers who are testing during their regular ancillary times. There will be no mass ancillary. Teacher aides will be used to relieve classroom teachers for bathroom breaks. At 2:00 those students who have not finished the test will be sent to the library to continue taking the test.

For Stanford/Aprenda: Ms. Brenner and Ms. Williams will be working a schedule for testing that will give the common starting times for all tests so that all classes will be doing the same testing at the same time each day. Ancillary teachers will be used to relieve teachers for testing and some ancillary classes may be moved around. There will be no mass ancillary.

Item relocations – The colored paper rolls that have been residing in the room next to the stage have been moved, because in there present location they are considered to be a fire hazard, to Mr. Vasquez's office. For safety reasons the laminator has also been relocated to Room T-12.

Buses for field trips – Ms. Arbizu proposed that some sort of fund raising be reinstated to help subsidize the funding of field trip buses, since they have gotten to be so expensive. After a brief discussion it was decided that the Friday grade level sales of items in the main hallway will be once again undertaken. The sales will be take place at 1:30 and a classroom signup schedule will soon be forthcoming.

Children leaving campus – This TOC by Ms. Smith concerned one her students, who was supposed to be going to the cafeteria at dismissal time for parent pickup, meeting the parent across the street from campus instead.